January 31, 2000

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Microsoft's Alternative To Solaris
Microsoft is reluctant to tout Data Center Server as its answer to Solaris.

By Aaron Ricadela

fter weathering criticism that it has overpromised and underdelivered on Windows scalability, Microsoft is touting the ready-to-ship Windows 2000 Advanced Server edition as its high-end environment for running line-of-business applications and dot-com operations, while saying Windows 2000 DataCenter Server will offer incrementally better performance and will serve as a niche product for the largest data warehousing environments.

The vendor is reluctant to spotlight DataCenter Server as its definitive answer to Sun Solaris. Windows 2000 Advanced Server, with support for eight processors in one server, 8 Gbytes of memory, two-node failover, and 32-node network load balancing, will be officially launched Feb. 17, though several large Internet companies, including Barnesandnoble.com, Buy.com, and Data Return, are already running the system in production.

"Advanced Server looks like it's going to be a major player in the data center," says Chris Ray, a Microsoft product manager. "It's hard to even say what the limits are going to be."

Some users who've seen the product aren't so sure. "Windows 2000 Advanced Server can't compete with Solaris right now," says Tanveer Khan, VP of technology at Answer Financial Inc., a reseller of insurance products in Canoga Park, Calif. "I think Microsoft will get there very quickly. But it's not there today."

Irv Epstein, VP of Windows 2000 program management at Unisys, says Microsoft can't field a true alternative to Solaris until Windows 2000 DataCenter Server arrives. "Why are customers moving to Sun as the technology for scalable electronic business? Because Solaris scales higher than anything up to Windows 2000 DataCenter," he says.

DataCenter Server is at risk of slipping. Microsoft now says it will be released to manufacturing approximately 120 days after the launch of Windows 2000 Professional, Server, and Advanced Server. Until now, Microsoft had promised the high-end package between 90 and 120 days of the others. DataCenter Server adds support for 32-way symmetric multiprocessing, 64 Gbytes of memory, and four-node failover.

Microsoft says DataCenter Server's main selling points will be performance and the reliability achieved by the vendor's tight controls on the number of supported systems and components, though users will trade some flexibility for predefined, tested configurations. Unisys is set to ship its new 32-way ES7000 server, the vendor's platform for running Windows 2000 DataCenter Server, at the beginning of the second quarter. Unisys estimates users will pay about $300,000 for a typical 16-CPU configuration and $500,000 for a 32-processor setup.

"Microsoft is testing the water with DataCenter Server," says Gartner Group analyst Tom Bittman, who expects users will pay a "surprisingly high" premium for the product. "This is going to be a fine-tuned version of Advanced Server," he says. "It's not going to be a big seller."

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